Peter Myers Blog

When I initially persuaded Jill to take up photography as a serious hobby, I bought her a Canon EOS 400 DSLR with the standard kit lens. She loved this camera and quickly became quite proficient with it. For a variety of reasons I was able to upgrade to the Canon 40D with the venerable 24-105 "L Series" lens. For a couple of years she never took this lens of her camera, and she took all sorts of photos (mainly of trees!). She loved the flexibility of the zoom lens, we both enjoyed the picture quality from the Canon sensor and lens combination, and she became reasonably adept at shooting in aperture priority mode. But after a while she fell out of love with the weight of this combo and so we started out on the "slippery slope" of trying to find the "ideal" mirrorless system!!! So in 2009 I bought her a Panasonic Lumix GF1 with two Panasonic kit lenses. This was certainly light compared to the Canon! ...But, in truth we were both rather disa

So having shot exclusively on the Sony RX1Rii during the middle leg of my recent month long holiday, I thought I would try the same trick and learn the in's and out's of the Fuji system by shooting exclusively on this during the final Hong Kong leg of our trip. For the purposes of this evaluation my system comprised the Fuji XPro2, together with the "kit" lens 18-55MM (2.8-4.0) and the 16mm F1.4 lens. At the risk of stating the obvious, the Fuji system differs from the Sony in that it allows for interchangeable lenses, and this interchangeability, in theory, allows for greater flexibility in shot composition etc. And that is exactly the case.  I have to say however, whilst I was very pleased with the Fuji, for a weary traveller, the Sony was much more pleasant to use, simply because it is smaller, lighter and less cumbersome because there is no need to carry round extra lenses. I know I could have carried the Fuji with just one lens, but then that ki

Ok, let me say up front that the images from this camera, in the right environment are simply stunning! Everything that I had previously read about the Dynamic Range (DR) of this camera sensor is true. Everything I had read about the lens sharpness is true, equally, everything about the quirky Sony menu system is also true. But "Oh Boy"this camera is a joy to use. It is light, sturdy, inconspicuous, and produces fabulous images. "Yes" the 35mm fixed lens, when compared to the Fuji 16mm and 8mm Fisheye lenses, is a bit "mundane", but the images it produces more than make up for this. I did not find the Auto Focus system to be at all slow, as had been suggested in various OnLine forums. The exposure metering was highly accurate, even the "eye focus" feature worked well and was used to great effect in this family group shot... I particularly liked the feature in the Sony that allowed me to set the camera on a 10 second timer

So, having decided to join the growing army of mirrorless camera users, I purchased the Sony RX1Rii, which I have wanted to try out for a few years, and the Fuji XPro2, which I had wanted to return to since my early days trying out the XPro1. So now the $64k question..Which camera to take on my upcoming trip? Not unexpectedly, I couldn't decide, so I took both....big mistake! We arrived in Dubai in the middle of Ramadan, and in the middle of the Dubai summer. It's hot in Dubai any time, but especially hot in summer. Too hot to be stood around I the heat trying different camera settings, and certainly too hot for Jill to be bothered with her new camera (Panasonic Lumix GX9) One of the points of going mirrorless was to reduce the weight of my carry around cameras. So I immediately negated this benefit by carrying around not one, but two systems, including three lenses for the Fuji, a flash unit for the Sony, sunglasses, sunscreen cream, water, phone, wallet, etc, et

In March 2018, after almost 9 years in the full time role of "Executive Officer" of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP), it was time for me to leave and move on to something new... The "something new" has yet to be finalised, but the 2 months of "working from home" whilst I worked my notice period at least gave me the chance to reinvigorate my love of photography, to review my own personal photography catalogue with literally thousands of images I have taken over the years, and to assess how, why and where I store, backup, use and publish my photos. Just to clarify...whilst I was the E.O. of the AIPP, I was not, and never have been a "professional photographer". In fact the definition of what constitutes a "professional photographer" is a debate for a whole other series of blog posts! I am just a keen amateur photographer. I take photos purely for my own pleasure, and along my life journey I happened to s